The Girl Who Died Recap
PLEASE NOTE:If you haven’t seen The Girl Who Died, please stop reading now! This article contains spoilers about the episode.
It’s a new week and the beginning of a new story - and a two-part story at that! Included here are some of the points you may have missed in The Girl Who Died.
Past Episodes
The orange spacesuit returns! In the opening moments Clara wears the memorable gear last seen in Kill The Moon (and first seen in 2006’s The Impossible Planet).
The
TARDIS Cloister Bell rings again this year, it happened just two episodes ago in Under The Lake.
Once more, the Doctor reveals his talent for speaking “baby” - first established in the Matt Smith story A Good Man Goes To War and also seen in Closing Time (starring James Corden).
Fans won’t fail to have noticed that clips from last year’s Deep Breath and 2008’s The Fires of Pompeii were used. The latter episode starred Peter Capaldi as Caecilius alongside David Tennant and Catherine Tate (it also featured Karen Gillan, who would go on to play Amy Pond). We last saw a clip of David Tennant in this year’s Series 9 opener, The Magician’s Apprentice.
The Doctor uses a yo-yo to intimidate the locals.The Fourth Doctor, made famous by
Tom Baker, utilised the toy in
The Ark In Space to test gravity (something Peter Capaldi did in last year’s Kill The Moon) and would play with it frequently over his time in the TARDIS. In the 1996 TV Movie, starring Paul McGann as The Eighth Doctor, the yo-yo popped again.
“I’m reversing the polarity of the neutron flow!” claims The Doctor. Although the phrase is synonymous with
The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), that particular incarnation only said “reverse the polarity of the neutron flow” on two occasions - The Sea Devils and The Five Doctors. Various versions were used over his regeneration. In the modern era, David Tennant reversed the polarity in The Lazarus Experiment whilst the Eleventh Doctor used it in The Almost People and The Day of the Doctor.
The Doctor mentions to the Vikings that he has “held a sword in battle.” In Robot of Sherwood, the
Gallifreyan claimed to have practised with Richard the Lionheart, Cyrano de Bergerac and Errol Flynn. No stranger to sword fights, the Time Lord has wielded the weapon in stories such as
The Christmas Invasion,
The Next Doctor,
The King’s Demons,
The Androids of Tara (part of The Key To Time),
The Masque of Mandragora,
The Time Warrior,
The Sea Devils and
The Crusade.
References
The Vikings talk of “Valhalla” - this is where those who die in combat go to, a gigantic hall ruled by Odin in Asgard (fans of superhero Thor may know all about this).
“Yeah baby!”, a phrase made famous by the Austin Powers series of films, is uttered by The Doctor.
We can spot The Doctor reading a “2000 Year Diary”, a nice nod to Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor’s 500 Year Diary. River Song also had her own diary to figure out where/when she and the Doctor were in their complicated timey-wimey relationship.
The Doctor gives nicknames to the Vikings. One of the names, Noggin The Nog, was a popular children’s animated show which started in 1959. Another, Heidi, was also a popular kids’ show from the 1970s, based on the classic book of the same name by Johanna Spyri.
Speaking of children’s TV shows, the fake Odin appears in the clouds not unlike the baby’s face in The Teletubbies (one of The Master’s favourite programmes).
Music
The Doctor and Clara use “Benny Hill” theme tune over the video footage of Odin being scared by a longboat. The Benny Hill Show ran for almost 40 years and its iconic music (usually accompanying Benny chasing/being chased by scantily-clad women) was titled Yakety Sax - a hit for Boots Randolph in 1963 (the same year Doctor Who began!). Fact fans will note that this is the first time Benny Hill has been mentioned in Doctor Who.
The Doctor nicknames one of the villagers “ZZ Top” - this was an American rock band well known in the 80s for their beards and sometimes even music. Oddly, ZZ Top are no strangers to time travel, having appeared in the popular movie Back to the Future III.
Series Arc?
“In a way, she’s a hybrid,” the Doctor eerily states of Ashildr at the end of the episode. During the closing moments of The Magician’s Apprentice, the notion of a Time Lord/Dalek hybrid was introduced. Coincidence…?
